


you can't go home again

by mahariels



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 07:03:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6601414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahariels/pseuds/mahariels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>several conversations corraidhin cousland has with morrigan, and one he has with fergus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can't go home again

“Grey Warden,” said Morrigan.

Corraidhin looked up to find her standing above him, looking down with an inscrutable expression.

He had watched the witch set up her tent in the corner of their camp furthest from the rest of the party, by the second campfire, but had not intruded on her solitude. Thus far she hadn't seemed excited about much except needling Alistair, who was admittedly easy to needle. But she had seemed surprisingly pleased when Corraidhin threatened the Reverend Mother into giving him the key to the qunari's cage. 

(Mother would have been furious, but they were in a hurry to leave Lothering and Mother--wasn't around to care.)

"Morrigan. Is everything all right?"

"I am well, thank you." The words were dry, like she was amused he even asked. She sat down next to him. They were close enough to the fire that he could feel the heat against his skin. Uncomfortable, but he was unwilling to move away. The Chantry sister's intense regard made him even more uncomfortable than the heat. 

"I am curious," she said, after his silence, "what you mean to do next. Alistair clearly does not wish to lead, and you did not seem particularly keen on it yourself. If Mother is to send me on this insane mission, I would request only that I not throw my life away blindly."

Corraidhin looked down at his boots. He had not thought of it, overmuch. Once they left Lothering, he had vague plans to go to Redcliffe because Arl Eamon sounded like a safe bet. Maybe they could raise enough men there that he could go and do the things that really mattered, like killing Howe and everyone he ever cared for and hanging the corpses over the battlements of Highever so everyone could see that his parents had not been forgotten.

He said, instead, "To Redcliffe first, I think. Beyond that, I thought to wait and see."

"Surely you do not trust Alistair's estimation of the aid Arl Eamon may provide!"

"I don't know what to think," Corraidhin said. "I've been a Grey Warden since approximately four days ago, and one of those days I was unconscious. I'm making this up as I go."

Morrigan rolled her eyes up to the heavens, and he wondered, briefly, what gods she would be entreating. "You have done nothing to assuage my concerns."

"I don't think I can."

"You are honest, at least," Morrigan said, with a small sniff of disgust. "I suppose I should be thankful for that."

"Don't be," Corraidhin said, and turned his scowl onto the fire. 

***

"Grey Warden," said Morrigan, as he trudged by her tent towards Bodhan's cart. 

It was becoming something of a ritual, their nightly conversations. Her tongue was sharp and poisonous on the road, with Sten and Leliana, but he thought she might not hate him so very much after spending several hours talking long into the evening. And he'd seen her sneaking treats to Dog, when she thought no one was looking. Anyone who treated Dog well--even as much as she professed to despise him--was in his good books.

"Yes?" he said.

"Come, and sit by the fire with me. I would know more of your childhood."

"Why?" 

If he sounded suspicious, he was. They all knew he'd been a noble in an abstract sort of way but no one really asked about Corraidhin himself. That intimacy was not something he cared to cultivate. He remembered Alistair, crying after Duncan had died, asking if he had ever lost someone. He'd just stared at the other man in silence until Alistair realized the mistake, and began apologizing profusely.

"I see 'tis fine for you to indulge your fancy and know all _my_  childhood escapades and adventures," Morrigan said, eyebrows raised, "but not for you to reciprocate? I cannot nurture a wonder about the man who is to save us all from the Blight?"

"Who is to _try_ to save us from the Blight," Corraidhin corrected her. "I'm sorry. It was rude of me. What do you wish to know, Lady Morrigan?"

"Oh, I am a lady, now! I see you overcompensate." Her golden eyes narrowed and he was reminded of something, something he could not entirely recall. Something so fucking familiar it shocked him.

"You may ask your questions," Corraidhin said, as he sat down next to her. "Whatever you wish to know."

"Your parents," Morrigan said. "Were they sorry to see you go?"

"My parents are dead." He braced himself for sympathy--he had had to cut Leliana off sharply and cruelly when she tried it--but he had underestimated the witch. Morrigan met his eyes with hers, and did not look away when he added, "Murdered."

"I see. And have you avenged them?"

"I'm told it will have to wait. There's a Blight on, after all."

"Ah, the Blight." She looked down at his hands, clenched in fists on his knees. "And what sort of a man were you before the Blight, Grey Warden? Before your parents were murdered?"

"I was not a man. I was a boy. At best. I am still..."

Morrigan laughed, a sound so unexpected he almost startled. "Still a callow youth. You _are_  honest."

"There's nothing to gain from bravado. One day I'll kill him. Until then whatever I am, whoever I am--it doesn't bloody matter."

"Is that not bravado in itself?"

"Perhaps. But it's the truth."

"I see," Morrigan said. She was studying his face and he was not sure if she liked what she saw. "Tell me, then, a memory. I have told you of my forays into the civilized wilderness and of my time spent in an animal's form. Tell me something _you_  remember."

"My father kept mabari, but he also had a mews and hunting hawks." She did not interrupt him, but her eyes fixed him with that piercing stare. He swallowed, hard, and went on. "I used to love spending time there, as a child. The falconer got used to having me under foot, and he'd even wait for me to do some of the work, like putting on their jesses, tossing them food. Sometimes if I was very good, and very lucky, he would let me take one out to the fields."

That was what her eyes had reminded him of. The master's favorite bird, a beautiful peregrine falcon, with the softest plumage and the maddest yellow eyes, whirling and furious. She was gentled but barely kept in check, still half-wild. Every interaction with her was a gamble, whether she'd rip out a strip of your skin for your troubles or bring you back a hare. 

"I did not figure you for a hunter."

"I was a terrible hunter. No patience. But I loved that bloody bird with all my damn heart."

"What happened to her?"

"She was--sick. Not _sick_ , exactly, but listless. Unhappy. She'd been taken as a chick and raised by hand, but even our falconer never really tamed her. One day I--I couldn't stand it any longer."

"And you did what?"

"I snuck into the mews at night, when no one was awake. And I set her free."

"A wise decision, Corraidhin. A creature such as that should never be caged."

"Did I do the right thing? She was raised by hand. She may not have known how to hunt on her own, to fly on her own. It may have been entirely selfish. I don't know what happened to her. She might have died. She probably died. Either way, the falconer found out, of course. He told my father. And my father tanned my hide bloody. I couldn't sit for a week."

"A harsh measure."

"I deserved it. It was a significant investment, that bird."

"What was her name?"

"Elyan. I still think of her, sometimes. And hope she's flying, somewhere."

"Even if she is dead, better she died free than blinded and tied in restraints."

"Well, Lady Morrigan? Do you understand me now?"

"I do not," Morrigan replied, "for your decisions still baffle me. But the pieces of the puzzle begin to slot into place."

***

"It was right to kill him," Morrigan said. "The boy was an abomination. His mind was likely beyond repair even if you could find a way to banish the demon."

The child's blood was on his hands. He wiped them uncomfortably on his armor, which just made it worse. "Do you ever wonder what would happen if you were to become an abomination?"

"I do not," she said sharply, "because I _would_  not. My mind is stronger than that."

He remembered her arguing with the demon in disguise in the Fade, facing it down as calmly as she now tugged her gloves back into place (remembered the dream-Flemeth slapping her so hard her head snapped back, remembered her cool, "that is more like it, but it is too late") and did not doubt it.

***

Corraidhin traced his hand along the curve of Morrigan's hip, marveling at the heat of her skin and the strength of her under his hands. He hadn't expected her to ask him to warm her tent--he had hoped, of course. The old Corraidhin would have pursued her relentlessly until she gave in or slapped him, and then he would've kept pursuing her anyway. The new Corraidhin, afraid to lose one of the few things that had grown to mean anything to him, had restrained himself.

But even he wouldn't refuse what was offered freely.

She propped herself up on her elbow, face barely flushed and her hair loose and endearingly messy where he'd pulled the bone pins from it. "Hmmm," she said. Her smile was the sort of smile he loved best to see on her face: mocking, full of hidden depths, like he'd never be in on the entirety of the joke no matter how well he got to know her.

"What?"

"Was that all?"

"What do you mean, was that _all_?"

"I have heard tell of the Grey Wardens and their legendary endurance, and while that was pleasant--"

" _Pleasant!_ "

"How would you have me describe it?"

"I'd think amazing would be a decent start, but--"

"I am merely telling the truth, Corraidhin, whether you like--"

" _Witch_."

"I see your stunning observational powers have not dimmed, even post coi-- _oh_ \--oh, do that again."

***

"And your mother, Grey Warden? What manner of woman was she?"

"My mother? Now? Is this really the time...?"

"I see no reason why not. We are alone, and I understand it is a sensitive topic. I should not wish to make you cry in front of our compatriots."

"I... it has been some time since I have spoken of her."

"Perhaps you should."

"She was--kind, but she had a sense of humor like a horsewhip and she knew how to use it. She liked to garden but she loved the sea. She took down her first Orlesian warship at fifteen, and she never let us forget it, if we complained about our training. At the very end, she refused to leave my father. I don't know exactly what happened, but I do know my mother, and I know she went down fighting."

"She sounds much like you."

"My mother was a much better person than I am. I--was not always the son my parents wished for."

"Oh?"

"I was proud. Reckless. Rude. Fergus was their perfect son, knowing his duty, marrying and siring an heir for Highever before his thirtieth birthday. I was--wild. The disappointment."

"I doubt they were truly so disappointed, Corraidhin."

"My mother might have forgiven me eventually, but she used to tell me that all of her gray hairs were my fault. And I told you about the falcon, well. That wasn't the only time my father tanned my hide, and deservedly so."

"And yet you are so accepting of your faults."

"I can't help who I was. All I can do now is what needs to be done. I hope my parents would be proud. Or at least would've forgiven me."

"Who is to say what the dead feel?"

"They're dead. They don't feel anything. Tell me of Flemeth, if I am to retrieve her grimoire for you."

"My mother was very different from yours. She was not cruel, exactly. She treated me from the first as an extension of herself, as an adult. Always I knew what was expected of me. Always I worked hard to meet those expectations. If I failed, I was punished, harshly. I may not have experienced as much of the world as Leliana, but I was--from a young age, I was very worldly, in many ways. It was my duty to lure any templars that might have discovered us to their doom, and I did this, without question. And Flemeth took my education very seriously--she would tell me many stories, of the legends of the Chasind, of her own life, of the men she had taken to her bed and used until they were mere husks."

"Andraste's tits, Morrigan, how old were you?"

"Five? Seven? It matters not. I grew up knowing what she was--and what I was to be. She is very wise, and very capricious, and very dangerous."

"You aren't anything like her."

"Am I not, Grey Warden?"

"You're not. Well--you're wise, of course, and dangerous, but you're not capricious. You're not cruel."

"You know me very little, then."

"I know you well enough to know you aren't like her."

"So young and so confident. 'Tis almost... sweet."

" _How_  old are you? You can't be much older than me."

"'Tis none of your business, Grey Warden. Now sleep."

***

"'Tis a shame," Morrigan said, as she kicked the werewolf's corpse away from her. "They are proud creatures."

"I don't trust the spirit," Corraidhin replied. "It's too risky."

"Bargaining with spirits often is. That does not _always_ mean that they cannot be trusted."

"Would you, then? Trust it?"

"No," Morrigan said. "But it is something to consider." 

***

"I also bought you these," Corraidhin said, after she'd taken the grimoire from him.

With the book still clutched to her chest like it was the most precious thing in the world to her, Morrigan frowned at the objects he held now in his hands. "What manner of thing is that?"

He felt foolish, holding out the five bloody scales to her. It was not the kind of offering he had given anyone else before, and he felt stupid and exposed, and furious with himself for feeling stupid. "They're dragon scales. I didn't wish you to think I'd lied to you. She tried to talk me out of it, you know. Said she'd give me the grimoire and leave peacefully and I could just tell you I'd done it. But I didn't take her offer. I wanted you to know I killed her for you, that I cut her down--that I really did--that I'm telling you the truth, and that I really did mean it when I said--oh, hell, I'm making a bloody cockup of this, Morrigan--"

The grimoire and the scales both fell to the ground as she stepped forward and gripped his beard in her hand, tugging him down painfully to her level. It hurt, but he didn't mind at all. He'd expect nothing less of her. He met her eyes, for one brief moment, fathomless gold eyes that stared up at him unguarded, like she was seeing him for the first time. Then she kissed him, and he forgot about all of that, forgot about his worry.

"You stupid man," she said. "This is without a doubt the _stupidest,_ most asinine thing anyone has ever done for me. I-- _thank you_."

"Don't thank me," he said, completely breathless. "It's the least I could do, killing your mother."

What he meant was, _I'd do anything for you, anything you asked._

***

"It was the correct choice," Morrigan told him, as he sat with his head in his hands, exhausted, by the motionless hulk of Caridin's stone body. 

They had spent the last two weeks slogging through the Deep Roads and endless waves of darkspawn and for what--a madwoman and her anvil, possibly a legend, and a drunken dwarf he barely knew. They were both absolutely filthy, stinking of sweat and shit and darkspawn blood and effluvia and other unspeakable grime. All he wanted was to return to Orzammar and drown himself in a bathtub, and then perhaps sleep for the next age, bone-tired in a way he couldn't remember feeling before, not even on all of their adventures together.

"Was it? For the first time I don't fucking know."

"Orzammar will need strength in the coming months," Morrigan said. Her hand rested on the shoulder plate of his armor, but he imagined he could feel the heat of it through the metal. Sweat trickled down his temple. "The anvil is the best way to do that. You know this--'tis why you killed the golem. 'Tis why Branka even now forges the crown for Bhelen."

"I just--never  _know_. I make all of these decisions that are going to shape Thedas for years and I'm just some teryn's younger son from the sticks. What if--"

"No. No _what if._ Grey Warden, the thing I have come to admire--no, do not look at me like that--the thing I have come to  _admire_  most about you is that you make decisions with your head, in the interests of power, in the interests of stability, and in the interests of yourself. I do not _always_  agree, but I have watched you grow from the boy you say you were into a man I--I willingly fight beside, come what may."

He took her hand in his, her fingers strangely delicate between the metal plates, though he knew that even with her hands broken she could kill him faster than he could think. "I--"

"Do not say anything more and ruin the moment, please, Corraidhin. I _know_."

They spent the night in the Anvil, but he was untroubled by nightmares.

***

Of all the sights he had thought to see, Corraidhin did not expect his rescuers to be Morrigan and Leliana dressed as Chantry sisters and looking particularly out of place. Morrigan was still wearing her staff--he wondered how they'd managed to pull _that_  one off. They had found them so quickly, Morrigan said, thanks to the ring.

"You should keep the robe," Corraidhin said to her, when she was finished inspecting him for wounds and trying to pretend she wasn't doing it. "I can think of a number of interesting uses for it."

"Please, I'm going to be sick," Alistair begged, "have mercy. I don't need to hear this the day before I'm probably going to die. Won't someone think of my poor stomach?"

Morrigan only laughed, the sound carrying like the hawk's bells through the now-empty halls of Fort Drakon.

 ***

“Corraidhin. You are not an easy man to track down for someone wearing such ridiculous armor.”

“It’s not  _that_  far from camp.”

“I know. I will have to bell you, like a cat. I did not think to find you here.”

“I didn’t think anyone would find me here.”

“I am not anyone.”

“You're right. So where did you think to find me, then?” 

He sat at the edge of a small lake, a solid three miles from their camp. The water was dark and murky, overgrown with algae. The stones he’d skipped angrily over its surface had sank like, well. Stones. It smelled vile, like rotten eggs. He’d been sitting there, staring at it, for the last two hours.

Morrigan loomed over him, her arms crossed over her chest. “ _In_ the camp, perhaps. Pestering Sten with questions, perhaps. Scratching that disgusting animal of yours behind the ears until you smell like wet dog when you come to my tent, perhaps.”

“Well, here I am. And here you are.”

“I see my presence is not desired. I will return, if you–”

“Don’t, Morrigan. I didn’t want to be in the camp any longer. I couldn’t, but you–”

She sat down next to him and again he marveled at how quietly she moved. She looked at him sideways, through her lashes. On any other woman it might have been a coy look. On her, it was almost a threat. “I wished to see how you fared.”

Corraidhin laughed. “How I fared, eh? How do you think I fare?”

Sometimes, when she stared at him that way, her sharp golden eyes piercing right through him, he felt a little… scared. (And a little horny. But mostly scared.) It was her brilliance–the diamond brilliance of her mind–that had first attracted him to her. But it was the way she made him feel like she was going to gut him just to look at his insides and see how they worked that had made him stick around.

“I think you killed the man who murdered your parents,” she said, smoothing an invisible speck of dirt away from her leather trousers. “And I think you do not  _feel_  the way you thought you would feel. And I think you are angry, and I think you are not sure whether you are angrier at Howe, or at yourself.”

He laughed again. It was not anything like his old laugh, the one he’d had back in Highever. That sound–stupid, braying–made him cringe whenever he thought of it. He tried not to think of it too often these days. The more distance put between the Corraidhin who had fucked his mother’s friend’s maid, and the Corraidhin who had spent the last two hours by a lake that smelled of rotten eggs, the better. 

“How do you do it?”

“Read your mind?”

“Yes.”

“Men are not such complicated creatures, Corraidhin. Even you.”

“I never claimed to be complicated.”

“No,” she said. She patted his knee, or the armor covering his knee. He imagined, instead, how her hand would feel. The warmth of her dry, calloused skin on his skin. It was like her eyes: arousing but terrifying. Sometimes he imagined he could feel the power sparking beneath her. “But you would like to think it so.”

“I can’t kill him again, Morrigan.” The words came out more vehemently than he’d meant them to. Was this the problem? “No matter what happens, I can only kill him once, and he deserved so much  _fucking_  more pain than I could give him, even after what I… I… it wasn’t  _enough_.”

“I wish you had told me this earlier, when we were still in the Arl’s Esate. If you wished,” she continued earnestly, one finger tapping his armored gloves, “I would have raised his corpse for you. It would not be  _actual_  life, of course, but you would have had the satisfaction of cutting him down once more. I would have done this for you until even necromancy could not raise him.” She thought on it a moment, scowling at the muddy water. “Though there was not much left of the body by the time you were done, I could have managed it.”

“Thank you,” he said. He could feel something–strange–shifting inside of him. The tips of his ears felt hot. Was this what Iona had felt, when he’d asked her to his room? “That’s… the sweetest thing anyone’s ever offered me.”

“'Twas not  _sweet_ , Corraidhin! 'Twas a serious offer, and would have been no small task.”

“I know it was,” he said. “I appreciated it, more than you know. Would you–would you kiss me, please?”

“Now? Here?” she asked, laughing. She laughed more often these days, though it was still often  _at_  him rather than with him. He didn’t mind. “With the romantic smell of rotting eggs to fill our noses, and an out-of-tempo bullfrog to serenade our ears?”

“Yes.” He was desperate, suddenly, to think about anything else besides Rendon Howe’s dismembered corpse on the gray stone floors of the dungeon, anything except  _I made her kiss my feet_ , anything except the pleased drawl in the arl’s response when he’d told Howe he would kill his wife and daughter. And how he had promised himself, despite it, to find them.

But Morrigan did not kiss him–at least, not immediately. She took his face in her hands, with that  _evisceration_ look clear on her face. “Grey Warden.”

“Witch,” he replied. It was not an insult–it was both the truth and the highest of compliments.

“You will fare well,” she said. Her voice was quiet but fierce, as though she sought to convince herself, as well. “You  _are_  well.”

“I will be,” Corraidhin corrected her. “I will be.”

She kissed him, then, and for the moment, it was true.

 

***

_Let's make this a night to remember, my love,_  she had said. 

When it was over (he did not want to think too closely about the magic involved and had looked only at her, thought only of her), Corraidhin said, "You said 'my love.'"

"I did," she replied, her voice sleepy but wary. 

Her head rested on his chest and he was terrified and exhausted and painfully in love with her and he did not want morning to come. "It's the first time you've ever said that to me. I thought you didn't believe in love."

She did not lift up her head, but yawned. All of the tension in her body was gone, limbs boneless and relaxed. "Someone once told me love is not a weakness."

"I thought someone else did not believe it."

"Grey Warden. Corraidhin. My love. How can you feel this thing we've created between us, born solely of magic and love and  _will_ , and view this as anything other than the greatest strength we have?"

He was quiet, then. She would leave him in the morning, he might not survive the battle, but the world had stilled, for the time being, and he was content.

***

She had told him she was leaving, but he looked for her anyway, in the madness and chaos that immediately followed the archdemon's death, half of him hoping she might have changed her mind. That he might share his triumph with her, she who had made it possible. 

She was nowhere to be seen.

He looked for her during Alistair and Anora's coronation ceremony, but she was nowhere to be seen.

The stupid part of him, the part that still had hope even after everything that had happened to him over the last year, almost expected her to be waiting for him at the Denerim gates.

But he left alone, with only Dog at his side.

*** 

A year after the end of the Blight, Corraidhin took the long road to Highever for the first time since he'd left in Duncan's company. It took him several weeks. He'd been traveling the continent in his fruitless search and had received the letter while he was in the Anderfels. How the courier managed to find him was a mystery for another time.

And now he had spent a good half hour, pacing within sight of the gates, fighting with himself about whether or not it was even worthwhile to do such a thing. It was not his home any longer. But Fergus had written, and Fergus had asked to see him.

And he owed Fergus that much.

Fergus, however, did not come down to the gates to greet him. It was understandable, of course. He had a new wife--the daughter of one of the neighboring teryns--and a newborn son he'd named Bryce. It was all very neat and thoughtful and Corraidhin felt a little like punching something every time he thought of it. 

Eventually, the Captain of the Guard came out to see him, flanked by three of his men. "Do you have business with the Teryn of Highever, serrah?" he asked coldly, his hand on the hilt of his sword. 

It was not until that moment that Corraidhin realized what he must look like--his hair and beard long and unkempt, his body heavily armored and his face scarred--pacing back and forth and arguing with himself. The Captain did not recognize him. He had no reason to recognize him. Corraidhin had been a boy when he'd fled Highever, and now he must look like a madman with a scruffy mabari following at his heels.

"I am the teryn's brother," he said around the furious lump in his throat. "Corraidhin. He is expecting me."

The Captain's eyes narrowed. "Forgive me, my lord. We were expecting--" He stopped, and shook his head. "We were expecting you."

_But not as you are_ , Corraidhin filled in the rest of the words. He sighed, suddenly very weary. "Take me to my brother, Captain."

The Captain turned him over to the custody of one of the upper servants, who in turn led him through the familiar halls of Highever. Corraidhin followed in a sort of a daze. The halls were as he remembered them, and not. He knew he must have had pleasant childhood memories of this place, but he could not recall them. The halls were not full of smoke and splashed with blood, though he remembered both so clearly he could almost taste the tang of them on his tongue, feel the prickling of his eyes.

He remembered, too, the look on Arl Howe's face as Corraidhin had beat him into an unrecognizable pulp of bone and blood. 

The man had not suffered nearly enough. Even if he had taken Morrigan up on her offer, all those months ago, it would not have been enough.

Fergus was in his study, and Corraidhin saw that he had commissioned two oil paintings of their parents, smiling down from the walls above. Fergus rose to greet him when the servant opened the door, but he faltered. The smile that had been on his face flickered, vanished, and then returned in full force as he said, arms extended, "Brother!"

"Brother," Corraidhin said. He did not move to embrace the Teryn.

"Come in, come in, please. Sit down?" Fergus' hands dropped to his sides. "May I have the servants bring you anything to eat? Anything to drink? You must be exhausted."

"I am fine," Corraidhin replied stiffly. "I stopped in a tavern on the road."

"I--I see," Fergus said, and gestured for him to sit. 

But he was still armed and armored, and sitting would have been awkward. Corraidhin shrugged his greatsword from his shoulders and looked around the room for a place to lean it--it was clear that Fergus had subsumed himself in administration. There was no place to rest a weapon here, so he leaned it against the desk, keenly aware of the awkwardness of the situation, before he sat down in the too-small chair. Dog whined and curled up at his feet, ears pricked up despite his relaxed pose.

"I have missed you," Fergus said. "I have worried."

"Worried?" Corraidhin blinked. "Why would you be worried about me?"

"Well, you--I heard the Wardens had tried to offer you Amaranthine, but you'd disappeared, and I--I wanted to make sure you were alive."

Corraidhin could think only of how unpleasant this conversation was, how Fergus looked soft and old and had gray hair at his temples, and how the artist who'd done the paintings had gotten Mother's nose wrong. It was too soft, not the sharp, proud prow she'd had in life. "I am alive," he agreed. "I've been traveling." Had he not been wearing his gauntlets, he would have been twisting the ring, as he often did in times of discomfort.

"I heard. We've been slowly rebuilding, here--what did you think, when you came through the gates? That was the first thing I restored, it's not the original stonework, of course, but--"

"They were solid. Hard to burn again, I'd think."

"The keep will never be quite what it was--before--but I've been trying very hard to make it home again."

"I see."

"What have you been _doing_  with your time, Corraidhin?"

"I've been traveling. Seeing the world. Hiring myself out as a mercenary when I needed the money." 

Fergus could not, or did not bother to try, to hide his horror. "A mercenary? Brother, you are the _Hero of Ferelden_ , the savior of Thedas and the hero of the Fifth Blight! You are a Grey Warden! The son of the teryn of Highever! Such work is beneath you."

"It serves its purpose," Corraidhin said, fidgeting. "I get by."

"You get b--! Come _home._ I'll find something for you to do, whatever you want--you can serve in the guard, or be my seneschal, Andraste's mercy, you don't have to do anything-- _whatever_  you want. You're the only family I have left."

"That's not true," Corraidhin said, very much aware of how much of an asshole he sounded, saying it but unable to stop himself. It was too much, this keep that was at once old and new, that bore unmistakable scars from the worst night of his life, that his brother had taken over in his own pleasant, well-meaning way. He could feel the weight of it crushing him, as surely as the archdemon's claws had thrown him to the stone of Fort Drakon. "You have your new family, don't you?"

"It's not the same," Fergus said fiercely. "You're--we're all that's left of them."

"You're all that's left of them. I gave up all of that when I became a Warden." He stood up. He could not do this. It had been a mistake. The biggest mistake he'd made in a very long time. "I'm sorry, Fergus. I can't. I can't do this."

"Corraidhin, please--"

But he was already swinging his sword back into position and walking towards the door, Dog close at his heels. He should have known you could not go home again. It was stupid to try. Stupid. So fucking stupid.

***

Corraidhin woke suddenly, in the dark. 

His hand was immediately on the hilt of his sword, but as he clawed his way from the fog of sleep, he realized it was not a physical danger. His chest ached, a curious sorrow, a strange regret so deep that he could feel it reverberating in his bones. But it was not _his_ feeling, he realized with a start and a shudder. He could feel it, as intensely and truly as his own, but it was alien.  

Dog lifted his muzzle, sniffed the air, and let out a long, low whine.

The ring--the one he never removed from his finger--was still cool in the night air, just an inert piece of metal, but somehow, he knew it was her.

_Where are you_?

But there was no answer, of course, and he did not really expect one. And so Corraidhin lay back down to sleep with only the lingering knowledge that somewhere, Morrigan was still alive--and thinking of him. She could not have been so far away, with the intensity of the feeling still wrapped about his body.

It was a cold comfort.

_Where are you?_

***

He stepped through the mirror after her, and part of him expected that would be the end of him. That he might explode in some kind of magical effluvia. Instead, once his eyes adjusted, he realized he was in a sort of crossroads. The light was strange and blue-grey, and though Corraidhin was no mage, he could feel the magic crackling around him, dormant but potent still. No, not magic-- _possibility_.

" _This_  is where you've been living?" he said. The hair on the backs of his arms stood on end. He could even feel his beard expanding, the itch of electricity running over his body like a caress. "How do you stand it?"

"Not _here_ ," Morrigan said with a short laugh, striding forward, "this is but a crossroads, a path. An extra layer of defense where Flemeth cannot follow, if she does not have the proper keys."

"Oh, that's good--" Corraidhin started to say, before he followed Morrigan through another mirror and almost fell off of the side of a steep, crumbling stairway before managing to pull himself back from the brink. " _Andraste's tits!"_

" _This_ is where I have been living," Morrigan said, and the sly smile she aimed in his direction almost made up for the fact that he'd almost fallen to his death. 

For such a smile, he would gladly walk through any number of treacherous mirrors.

"It's certainly impressive," Corraidhin replied, looking down. He kicked a pebble off of the side and it dropped. He heard no sound. "Your balance must have improved spectacularly, living here."

"I see you have not changed a whit."

"I am... older," Corraidhin said. He fought the urge to reach for her hand, unsure if she would accept it. "I have missed you, Morrigan. Very much."

She made a dismissive noise, but he saw that she would not meet his eyes. 

Instead, she turned and began the long hike up the stairs, towards what he now saw was a small, cozy-looking hut. Strangely, despite the buildings surrounding them, the stairs led to an outcropping of rock and grass--he could even see roots hanging down, exposed to the air. Some fell magic must have held it together, but it was difficult to imagine what fell magic that might be, when the vegetable garden ( _vegetable garden_ ) was so carefully tended and cheery looking.

His chest felt the lightest it had in years. He could not believe it was happening, like a dream from which he would wake any second. But it was real. Surreal, but real. She took his hand, and it was solid and warm and just as he remembered. 

"Now..." Morrigan said, as she approached the door, and for one of the few times in the entirety of their life together, she looked uncertain. Almost nervous. But she steeled her shoulders, and releasing his hand, stepped over the threshhold of the cottage. "I believe there is someone you should meet. Kieran? Your--your father has come home."


End file.
